hikes and spending cuts, we are getting a new snapshot of our economy. the number of americans seeking unemployment benefits fell last week by 23,000, but the total, 393,000, is still way above where we need to be to bring the unemployment rate down. in fact, our four week unemployment average went up to over 405,000 last week. the report for the whole month is out a week from tomorrow. >>> meantime, a new report finds that the number of americans on food stamps spiked by about 10% last year. that means about 15 million american households got food stamps in 2011, and it is even more profound when you look at what america has and has not created over the past decade. look at this chart. private employment is the line at the very bottom. it's gone down. this is going all the way back to 2002, i think it is? yeah, so look at this. you can see there starts to be a dramatic change around '08, '09. so private employment down, government employment slightly up, medicaid enrollment has soared -- that's what you get that helps folks without a lot of means -- and look at the top line. that repr